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BGMA at 2018 HOPE Global Forums

Representatives from Bryant Group Motorsports Academy (BGMA) were thrilled to be a part of the 2018 HOPE Global Forums, this past week, here in Atlanta Georgia.

The annual meeting is host to over 3,000 delegates and a plethora of marquee speakers, presenters, and workshops to discuss financial inclusion and solutions to end poverty as we know it.

We are beyond grateful to our founder John Hope Bryant and Operation HOPE for including us and the students of "High Velocity Education" in this year's agenda.

Bryant led the presentation and introduced Bunche Middle School principal, Dr. Mario Watkins who gave brief remarks and thanks alongside BGMA student, Jordan Byrd. Jordan very excitedly shared his team's car and some of the things he's learned this past semester with our program.

Bryant and O'Neill also shared a major announcement that recently Ford graciously donated two Ford Performance vehicles to BGMA to enhance the growing curriculum and on track experiences: A 2017 Ford Shelby GT350R and a 2017 Ford Shelby GT350. We can't say thank you enough for this unbelievable contribution.

A core component of the in-school curriculum is an exercise in teamwork. Over the course of 15 weeks, alongside our traditional workshops on friction, gravity, and momentum, we place the students on their own race team.

After an interview process, we give them a specialized role and assign them to a team of 4 other kids. One student is the CEO, the mechanic, the driver, the engineer, the designer, and so on.

Going through the process of preparing a pitch, interviewing, respecting a hierarchy, and working on a team gives the students an inordinate amount of invaluable life-skills and business acumen they wouldn't normally be exposed to until much later in their education, if at all.

After they've created a team name, logo, and become more comfortable with the status quo of their group, we deliver the cars. RC cars in our case.

These are not your "run of the mill" toy RC cars. They're built by a company called Traxxas with extremely high quality components and attention to detail. They're powered by a brushed DC motor and a lithum polymer battery pack. They're also All-Wheel-Drive and have an unexpectedly robust suspension set-up. They will hit upwards of 30-40mph and can achieve even higher speeds with more aggresive components.

As a way to share this unique platform and demo the cars capabilities, we brought a small scale RC racetrack to the ballroom area at the HOPE Global Forum. Interest in playing with the cars was VERY high to say the least! Even high profile executives and bank officials weren't shy about wanting to take a few laps around the track!

We couldn't be more excited about the future and our coming expansion in Atlanta Public Schools and beyond. Let's "make school cool" together.